Non-LGBT aspie hoping to learn more about the T

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I consider myself an open minded person with a live-and-let-live attitude, and I fully support gay rights in all it's forms.
However I don't at all understand and am completely ignorant about transgender issues. I have never really met anyone that was openly transgender and so have never really had the opportunity to discuss anything with someone. I'm posting here hoping to fix that.

My first questions are pretty foundational: What does it mean to be transgendered? How did you know you were transgendered? Is being transgendered a desire to become the opposite gender, or a belief that deep down you in some way already are the opposite gender?

Please note that I'm not asking about intersex people, but transcoder people. The distinction being, as I understand it, that intersex people have an ambiguous biological sex whereas transgenderd people have a definite biological sex that doesn't correspond with their gender identity.
Also, if I've said anything wrong or offensive please correct me but please don't get too angry with me. As I said I am quite ignorant about this issue but I am really trying.

It's really difficult to summarize, but there were several formative events in my life. The first time I remember was around my 6th birthday, when I was in the back of my mum's red Audi station wagon with my sister in a McDonald's parking lot, while mum was up fulling around with something. I thought it was fun to try on my mum's lipstick, but my mum caught us and got on me for it, warning me about how my dad would react. Nevertheless, she did give us her old lipstick and took away her new lipstick. Despite that, I felt immediate shame and anxiety that was hellish; everything seemed to get foggy. Later on for years, at night, I would think about various devices that would turn a boy into a girl and even drew a picture of one of them (but my parents did not understand its meaning, to my relief). When bathing, I would take a wash cloth and cover that thing down there so I would not see it when I looked down. When my mum got me a medical dictionary, I found the word "sex change," and immediately it was like something hit me inside, this is what I needed! I remember speaking of it, but everything I heard was discouraging, and it felt like I was going to have to wait a long time for it.

At puberty, I expected to grow breasts, but instead was disgusted with all the hair and the thing down there starting to brush up agian my leg, which unnerved me, making me want to pick the perfect way to where I would not be aware of its existence. Looking at it when I was naked in front of the mirror or looking down when I was naked was always a shock, a surprise, something I did not expect to see. When I was 14, there was a boy I curled up again, and felt like a girl when doing so, but I was immediately called "gay" and sucked it down.

I was never particularly feminine, however.

Think of it as your mind not matching your body.

You feel very manly, you walk and talk like a man, sit like a man, mannerisms like a man, but you're in a pink dress, and that's how you were told all your life to dress. You just don't feel right.

Breasts feel like flappy hanging things from your chest. You don't like your womanly hips and thighs, you keep telling yourself you should be taller, squarer, and have bigger feet so you can fit into mens shoes, instead of boys shoes.

If you stuck a bearded man in a dress, that's what a transgender (female to male) feels like. They feel like an idiot, and they feel like everyone is staring at them.

It's the same way for male to female. Stick the feminine woman with long black hair, sparkly bangles and high heels, in a fluorescent jacket and dirty denim jeans like a brick layer, they would feel like an idiot.

I hope this helps.

I'm going to try and explain the bits I get mentally stuck on. There's been a great weakening of gender roles in recent decades, mainly through feminism, and people of either sex are much less restricted than they were in previous generations. It's common now to see male nurses, female construction workers, expensive male beauty products, females wearing pants, males with long hair, females with short hair etc. That's not to say that gender roles no longer exist, I of course realise that growing up wanting to behave in ways stereotypical of the opposite gender would be very difficult, but I do think it is easier than it was 50 years ago. My hope is that these gender stereotypes continue to weaken and that in the future it becomes more acceptable for men to wear dresses and makeup or for women to let their body hair grow naturally if they so choose.

I'm uncomfortable with identifying some traits as inherently masculine of feminine; to use some of your examples Wind, some women are already tall and square with big feet but are still very much women, and some men are short and slender with small feet but are still very much men. Some men even naturally grow breasts while some women naturally grow moustaches. My idea of a perfect future society would be one where there are no real associations between biological sex and things like behaviour or body shape. Maybe there would be the observation that, for example, men are statistically likely to be taller than women, but without the idea that height is a masculine feature, or that tall men are more manly than short men. That's always been my view and I have trouble reconciling that with some things I hear about transgendered people.

By trying to change your gender by changing various physical or behavioural characteristics aren't you reinforcing the idea those characteristics belong to that gender?
I'm not at all uncomfortable with the idea of a man walking down the street in a dress with lipstick and eyeliner and hair down to his waist, but I do start to get uncomfortable if this man changes his name to a female one and asks to be referred to with feminine pronouns. For the record I don't support any kind of name-calling or ostracism that I'm sure many transgendered people go through, and I probably would acquiesce and use feminine pronouns, but I would be very uncomfortable doing so.

Again I'm sorry if I'm upsetting anyone, and If anything I'm saying misrepresents transgendered people then please call me out on it. I really think that my ideal outcome would be for someone to convince me that I'm wrong, and I'm sort of on the fence right now but I'm not quite there yet.

Do you feel uncomfortable is someone changes their name, always? Say, someone you've previously known as Adam wants to be known as Alex. Or, a very common example, a woman who previously went by the surname Wood now wants to go by the surname Smith, the same as her new husband. Does that make you feel uncomfortable?

What if they change their title, maybe because they've been ordained, knighted, or married? Would you feel uncomfortable calling the hypothetical woman Mrs Smith instead of Miss Wood?

Or is it that a trans* person wants to be referred to as the "other" gender, and that makes you feel uncomfortable? If so, why? Doesn't that mean you're still supporting a line between the two, and saying "girl stuff here, boy stuff here, and never the quote shall be paraphrased"?
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As for the biological stuff... I don't know what sex you are, but imagine if you suddenly started developing the physical characteristics of the other sex?

Or, how would you feel if the nerves in part of your body - let's say a finger - went odd and started to give you a constant low sensation of pain, but the finger was still functional. The only problem, it feels like it shouldn't belong, it's driving you to distraction, it hurts... and there is no means that it can be stopped, short of removing the finger. An apparently healthy finger, but one that will drive you crazy if it remains. I think the only viable option would be to remove what looks to be healthy tissue. It's like that with trans* people - healthy bodies, but there's a disjoint between the brain and the rest of the body, and the only way to fix it is to change the body.

What I'm trying to explain is the opposite. Imagine for the moment that there was no concept of "girl stuff here, boy stuff here", that it was all just human stuff. Imagine that no item of clothing, way of behaving or anything else was associated as masculine or feminine. What would being transgendered mean in this hypothetical world?

I've seen the distinction between sex and gender explained as follows: sex is the strictly biological nature of your body (XX or XY chromosomes, basic anatomy of the sex organs etc.) while gender is all the cultural associations we have, e.g. women are more nurturing, men are more analytical to name only two of an uncountable list.

I think most people recognise that this conception of gender applies social pressure to behave in a certain way, and that this is a problem. The transgender community seems to me to be offering the solution of letting people choose which gender they identify most with, which stereotype they feel most approximates their 'true self'. I feel that a better solution would be to abandon the concept of gender altogether.

Let men wear skirts and eyeliner and shave their legs and still be men, let women stop wearing makeup and stop shaving their entire bodies and still be women. If we remove all gender distinctions, then doesn't the very idea of changing gender lose meaning? What exactly is being changed?

It's obviously not the name change that I am uncomfortable with, people do that all the time. It's just that I see this desire to be seen as the opposite gender as reinforcing the idea that someone's gender is important or even relevant in the first place.

I really don't effing care. I'm tired of this appendage and want it gone. It disturbs me to look at it, to feel it against my leg, and years of therapy haven't changed that. Now that I'm on female hormones and living full-time as a woman, it has come time to finally be rid of that thing.

If you abolish gender, then you're not "letting women be women and men be men", because there is no longer any womanhood to actually be. In a hypothetical world in which gender was abolished, and there was only maleness and femaleness corresponding to sexual attributes? There would still be people who would change their attributes because their body does not map onto their brain, and thus causes intense discomfort that can only be resolved through modifying the body.

Oh, and I think GID should be renamed Gender Incongruity Disorder, to recognise that the problem is not a disorder of gender identity, but of incongruity between the brain and the rest of the body.

Moving back to your post, you don't seem to understand that transgender people don't change gender, they change their presentation and bodies to reflect the gender that they already have.

As far as reinforcing the concept of gender goes, don't you do that all the time when you let people call you by gendered pronouns, and conform to what is expected for people of your sex? You sound far too much like you're trying to lay upon transgender people a burden that you yourself do not wish to carry.

It's not reinforcing gender roles as important. It's putting the mind at ease with one's body sex and mind sex. Having male parts or female parts is the most important part, at least for me. I could care less if both men and women could dress up as the other.

@Ellingtonia: (I am not trans, BTW.) For some trans people it's a matter of social stuff, but for others it's a purely physical (body) thing where society's views of gender are irrelevant. Julia Serano is an example of the latter, and wrote a book called "Whipping Girl." I think (not sure tho), that the physical dysphoria is considered the truer indication of transness.

I very often don't conform to what is expected for people of my sex.
You're right there, I really don't understand this idea of gender.



If we are more considering the physical aspects, then is it even possible to change one's sex? If you want to have your penis removed then by all means do so, but I don't think that can make you female.

I really appreciate this robust discussion everyone. I accept that some of the things I say might upset or offend some people but this is not my intention. I'm doing this because I really do want to understand.

As of now, there is not a way to truly be the other gender. Technology just has gotten decent enough to mimic genitalia, but that's not enough for some people like me. It has to be all the way as if you'd been born the other gender. There is much evidence in the world that supports the possibility for a full reversal. Fish for example, often change gender. There is a very rare condition that makes one transition into the other gender after puberty. And above all that, we all start out female and either stay female or become male at birth, that's without considering the rare inter-sex individuals of course. So yes, I think as long as there is a possibility out there that one could become something else, it can be replicated, we just need the technology and understanding to do so.

Thanks for this. I did a bit of reading earlier on those rare conditions that make one transition into another gender, namely congenital adrenal hyperplasia and androgen insensitivity syndrome, and my understanding is they are both hormonal abnormalities that cause people who are genetically one sex to develop characteristics of the other sex during puberty, but this isn't really changing sex and would be better thought of as either part of the variation within the two sexes or as a form of intersex (which I'll add is actually more common than most people realise). But as medical science stands it isn't possible to change one's sex.

I guess I see the attempt to change one's sex, at least for the moment, as something impossible. If someone I knew started the sex change process as it currently exists and asked me to use the other gendered pronouns I would do it to be polite and kind, but I wouldn't really believe it.

I've long ago accepted that the sex change process as it is is good enough for me.

And thank you for the consideration.

Defining physical sex is a lot harder than most people think, which makes how one changes their sex a non-obvious question. In the end, it's just perception. It's part of why sex-determining-panels for women's sports were tried and then dropped. A few women athletes (not trans in any way) were wrongly stripped of medals and humiliated (one committed suicide) because even doctors can be dumbasses about the subject, and journalists and the public even dumber.

I.e. "Y chromosome makes you male" -- even if you were born with a vagina, grew breasts at puberty and couldn't pass as a man if your life depended on it (complete androgen insensitivity syndrome)

"Hormone levels make you male or female" see above

"XX makes you female" -- unless you have genetic mosaicism

And on and on.

The link below is to a book on the subject, by Anne Fausto Sterling, who is professor of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... 6862,d.cGU

What I find quite interesting is how fragile the sex determination system is. You the presence or absence of a full Y chromosome (only 80 genes!) seems to determine fertility - that is, you need it to be a fertile male, and if you have it you're unlikely to be a fertile female - but the actual primary sexual characteristics can be decided by only a few genes. Such as, testosterone is a progenitor molecule for oestrogen, so if the body can't produce enough aromatase, which is apparently encoded by a single gene, an otherwise female embryo will develop as a male, it's just that he'll be sterile. A chromosomally male embryo that doesn't possess the SRY gene, on the other hand, won't produce androgens, and so she'll develop as a sterile female. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome has already been mentioned. That's not even getting into the androgyny aspects of autism (hey, I wonder if the rise in oestrogen-like chemicals has anything to do with an increase in autism? Ignore Baron-Cohen, try the technique of formulating alternative hypotheses)...

For a lot of intersex conditions, it's essentially just performing hormone therapy on the fetus, where it will have a much bigger impact. Unfortunately for us transgender people, the cross sex hormones only seem to have reached our brains... (yes, I know the science isn't quite settled on that causing it)... the older we get, the less malleable our bodies become. But fortunately, we are scientists and tinkerers, and we will reverse that trend.